Gun Powder Tea - British East India Company:

The British East India Company was a "business" set-up by wealthy merchants and aristocrats way back in 1600 by a 'Royal Charter' from Queen Elizabeth I ... to "trade".

In 1588 the poms had defeated the Spanish Armada and captured many Spanish & Portuguese ships with rich cargoes .. what to do with all this capital and invasive power? - Why not lets get together and see what we can plunder in the East Indies. - God bless The Queen -  Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah.

This "trading" involved pushing out Dutch & French interests from various parts of the world so that English adventurers could take anything they wanted from the locals and sell it for profit back home.

The Company naturally met with opposition to their overseas activities - and in a typical English way developed private armies to secure territory. Logically this use of force by military means led to the East India Company controlling most of the Indian sub-continent and South-East Asia with a private army of around 260,000 men at its peak .. all for private profit.

 Following the INDIAN REBELLION in 1857 the British Crown took over the enterprise's activities leading to establishment of The British Raj.

Tea or Coffee - The British Raj Wasn't Fussy

- As Long As It Was Served.

This expansive era in "British India" led to the use of lots of gunpowder and to the establishment of the Indian Ordnance Factories from 1775 .. But Gunpowder Tea is something else - a Chinese style of green tea where the leaf is rolled into pellets that explode and unroll when steeped in hot water.

In the 1830s The British East India Company, concerned at the growth of Chinese tea in Britain - started tea plantations in India using native Indian plants from Assam,. They managed to take 90% of the British market away from China and this trade was also encouraged in India by tea-breaks and chai wallahs selling spiced masala chai refreshments on the expanding Indian railways network.

I read that a widely used tea in India is a curled granulated Assam black tea called Mamri Tea (gunpowder tea?) and this is blended with cardamon & ginger and other spices to make a sweet milky drink. - Buffalo milk is traditional - as is also the use of brown palm sugar (jaggery) locally - but condensed sweetened tinned milk is lately popular for making both sweets and beverages.

- That is a well known image of Teddy Roosevelt with John Muir on a wilderness camping trip in 1903 discussing nature conservation.

.. Interesting how our lifestyle habits are influenced by "Trade" eh,

Marty K.